The Last Tudor

by Philippa Gregory

  “And Robert Dudley has none. Did I tell you that on her deathbed she willed a fortune to his valet?”

  “To Tamworth?” I ask, remembering the man who rose up from his bed and went to guard the door without surprise or question, as if he had done it many times.

  “On her deathbed,” Mary repeats. “So now everyone says that it proves that he guarded the door while she was with Dudley. She is completely shamed and Dudley too.”

  “Nobody supports him for Protector of the Realm?”

  Mary makes a contemptuous face. “Not one. Not even he speaks for himself. He says that Henry Hastings should be heir, but that’s only because they are brothers-in-law. Not even Dudley dares to claim the protectorship. It was the delusion of a fever, and it shows that the only thing the queen thinks of when she is about to die is leaving her kingdom to her lover and hiding their secret shame by paying off his valet.”

  “And the parliament will force her to name an heir?”

  “They won’t grant her the money for the army in France unless she does. They have her in a vise. She has to send money for her troops, and parliament will only give it to her if she names her heir—if she names you.”

  “She can’t name anyone else?”

  “There is no one else.” Mary’s eyes are bright. “I can’t tell you how many friends I have at court now. You would think I was six feet tall. Everyone is my friend and everyone has been heartbroken for you. I have dozens of messages for you. Everyone knows that it has to be you. Even Elizabeth. She will have to announce it any day now.”

  I pause for a moment so that I can feel my triumph. “It’s certain, Mary? I can’t stand another false hope.”

  “It’s certain,” she says. “She will have to name you. She has to name someone, and there is no one else.”

  “And release me,” I say.

  “Of course release you,” my sister confirms.

  “And Ned, and name him as my husband.”

  “She has to. She cannot put a woman’s whim against the will of the parliament. She has publicly promised that she will take advice, and name her heir, and nobody advises anyone but you.”

  “Is she very scarred by the pox?” I ask, thinking of Elizabeth’s frantic vanity.

  “She’s doing all she can to overcome it. She has only a few marks on her face and she’s painting them out. They cut her hair when she was in the fever, so she’s wearing a wig of red horsehair. But she looked well when she went to parliament in her scarlet robe trimmed with ermine. One or two said that she looked so young and healthy she could give them an heir next year if only she would marry now.”

  “But she’ll never marry at their bidding,” I predict.

  Mary shakes her head. “I would swear that if she can’t have Robert Dudley, she’ll never take anyone. Most people think she showed that herself, naming him as her heir.”

  “Then why does she not understand that I had to marry for love?” I ask. “If she is in love so deep that she would risk her kingdom? Why does she not sympathize with me?”

  Mary shakes her head at the plaintive tone in my voice. “Because she’s not like you,” she declares. “You don’t understand her. Everyone thinks she’s a woman blown about by passion, that her heart comes first. But she’s not. She’s a woman who feels her passions but is not shifted by them. She’s determined and she’s selfish. She’ll never give Robert Dudley up, but she’ll never marry him either. She loves the throne more than him. He still thinks she will be unable to resist him, but I think he’s wrong. He’ll find he has the very worst of the bargain: always close to Elizabeth, but never on the throne.”

  “You make her sound like a tyrant,” I whisper.

  Mary raises her arched eyebrow. “She’s a Tudor,” she says. “They’re all tyrants.”

  I gasp and put my hand to my belly, where I have felt a great heave. I bend over, panting with pain.

  Mary is instantly alert. She jumps down from the chair and reaches up to put her hand on my bent back. “What is it? What is it?”

  “Something moving,” I gasp, waiting in case the pain comes again. I straighten up. “Dear God, a terrible spasm.”

  “Is the baby coming? Is it due?”

  “How am I to know when it is due?” I say wildly. “I can’t see a wise woman or a physician.” I can feel the sensation coming on again, and this time I hold the arms of the old throne and pant like a dog as the pain rises and falls. “No, I remember this,” I say when I can get my breath back. “It’s coming now.”

  “What can I do?” Mary rolls up her sleeves and looks around the room.

  “Nothing! You must do nothing!” I am well enough to know that Mary must not be found here, assisting at the birth of yet another heir to the throne of England. “You must go, and say nothing about it.”

  “I can’t leave you here like this!”

  “At once! And don’t say anything about it.” I am holding my belly tightly in my hands, as if I would delay the remorseless movement of the baby and the irresistible rhythm of the pains. “Go, Mary! As soon as you are safely away I will send my maid to the lieutenant and he will get me a midwife. But you can’t know of the birth. You’ll have to wait with the court for news and then act surprised.”

  She almost dances on the spot in frustration. “How can I leave you? My own sister? Without help? Here? Where Jane . . . where Jane . . .”

  “To keep yourself safe,” I gasp. The pain is coming again. I feel the sweat stand out on my face, all over my belly. “I care for your safety so much. I swear I do. Go, Mary, and pray for me in secret.”

  I am bent over the chair, so she stretches up on tiptoes and kisses my face. “God bless you and keep you,” she whispers passionately. “I’ve gone. Call your maid at once. Send me news without fail.”

  She tiptoes from the room and the guard lets her out and shoots the bolts behind her. I wait for a few moments, riding another wave of pain, and then I shout: “Lucy! Come to me!”

  There is complete uproar. The rooms are stripped for a childbirth and the Tower guards go running around the city looking for a midwife who can come at once, and a wet nurse in milk. The Tower servants drag in a daybed to my bedroom and tie a rope to the posts of my bed for me to pull in my labor, while I stride up and down the rooms and clutch the back of a chair when my pains come. They are coming quickly now; I can hardly recover between them. The dogs are everywhere underfoot, and Mr. Nozzle sits on the top of the wooden shutter and watches me with concern in his twinkly brown eyes. I send a message to Ned, and when I glance out of my window as I walk back and forth, trying to ease the constant ache in my back, I see that his scarf has been replaced at his windowsill. He is flying the Seymour standard and I laugh aloud at his joy, and have to steady myself by bracing against the wall.

  My lady-in-waiting, Mrs. Rother, comes in, white as her linen, and a fat red-faced woman follows her. “My lady,” Mrs. Rother says. “I had no idea! If you had told me, we could have prepared. This is the best midwife we could find in a hurry.”

  “Don’t mind me!” the woman objects, speaking in the sharp accent of a Londoner born and bred.

  “I don’t mind,” I assure her. “I hope you will care for me and my baby. This is my second birth.”

  She holds my hands in her comforting meaty grip as the servants behind me make up the daybed with clean linen, and bring in jugs of hot water, clouts and sheets, and linen torn up into swaddling cloths.

  Lucy holds Teddy on her hip. “Should I take him out?” she asks nervously. “And shouldn’t the dogs go out?”

  I am suddenly overcome with tiredness. “Yes. Put everything to rights,” I say to Mrs. Rother and Lucy. “I want to lie down.”

  They guide me to the daybed and let me rest between my pains. “Tell my lord that I am well,” I whisper to Lucy. “Tell him I am merry.”

  The baby is born that evening, a beautiful boy, just as I prayed. They pack my bleeding parts with moss and tie my breasts up with linen and let me lie in t
he tattered big bed. They have found a wet nurse and she sits beside me and feeds him. We show him to Teddy, who points and says, “Hee!” as if to tell the baby to gee up. But Ned is not allowed to come to me.

  The lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Edward, whispers through the half-open door from the presence chamber, “I have sent your news to the court, Lady Hertford. I am afraid that they will be most surprised.”

  “Thank you,” I say, leaning back on the pillows. I am dizzy from drinking the mulled birthing ale. I know that the court will be more than surprised. Those who want a secure Protestant succession will be delighted—that’s almost everyone. Those who measure my claim will see that it is redoubled. Only Elizabeth will begrudge me this beautiful baby and resent my happiness. We will have to wait and see what she will do in her revenge.

  She moves swiftly and spitefully. The lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Edward, is locked in his own dungeon, and Ned is commanded to appear before the Star Chamber to answer charges of deflowering a virgin of the blood royal in the queen’s house, breaking prison, and ravishing one of the blood royal for a second time.

  As he leaves the Tower to face his accusers I drape the Seymour standard over my windowsill, so that he can see that his babies and his wife are well, that we honor our name and that we will never deny it.

  Of course, he does not deny us. But I don’t know what he says, nor how he bears his interrogation, till I get an unsigned note from Mary, written in unrecognizable script.

  The Privy Council announced that you are the heir on the very day that they got news that you were with child. There was uproar, but it proves your marriage and strengthens your claim. Ned did well before the Star Chamber and swore that you were man and wife. He’s to be fined a greater sum than anyone could pay—and stay in prison indefinitely. The people of London are calling for your release, singing ballads and comparing you with our sister Jane. They demand the freedom of your sons, they are calling the boys the new blessed princes in the Tower. Send me news of your health and the babies. Burn this.

  THE TOWER, LONDON,

  SUMMER 1563

  I christen my baby Thomas Seymour, but no one is allowed into the Tower for his baptism. His godparents are two of the Tower guards, who give him his name at the font in the Tower chapel as my lady-in-waiting holds him. They bring him back to me with his little soul saved, but there is no one to church me. I think that I am surely a good Protestant, for here is another of the sacraments of the old Church that I am refusing. I get up out of bed and wash myself and change my linen and pray in private, and it is done.

  I can get no news except the court gossip that Mrs. Rother brings me. She tells me that my cousin Lady Margaret Douglas and her fragile husband, Matthew Stuart, are living quietly at their home, keeping their heads down as Elizabeth’s displeasure blows over them. Now that they are freed—who were guilty of so much—the people of London are even angrier about my imprisonment, and now people start to say that my sister Jane was with child in the Tower, just like me, and her baby was killed when she died. I hate the way they use her name, but I am touched that they remember her as a martyr and say she would have given them a boy and an heir for England. They say that I, too, am unjustly imprisoned. The very people who called for “Our Elizabeth” to be a savior for the reformed religion in England now swear that she has become as bad as the persecutors were before. They say that she is torturing the sister of their Protestant martyr. Her army has failed in France, and failed to defend the Protestants, and now her defeated troops are straggling home, wounded, unpaid, miserably mutinous, their ranks ravaged by a terrible outbreak of plague.

  But the most extraordinary news comes not from Mrs. Rother, but from my little maid Lucy, who had it from the poor lieutenant’s cook, who had it from one of the royal cooks, direct from the royal dinner table. In an attempt to reverse the opinion of everyone, and make her a safe choice of heir, Elizabeth is going to order Robert Dudley to marry Mary Queen of Scots.

  It drives me quite mad not to be able to tell this to Ned, imprisoned in the White Tower and unable to come to me. He would laugh and laugh with me over this insane proposal. Elizabeth must have lost her mind to think of proposing her shamed lover to another queen, especially one who is so grand and on her dignity. Mary Queen of Scots has been offered Don Carlos—the heir to Spain. Why would she consider one of Elizabeth’s subjects? And one so tainted by such scandal? But Elizabeth is so desperate to avoid my rightful claim to the throne that she has hatched this impossible plot so that I can be put aside in favor of a shamed favorite and a papist Frenchwoman, whose family has just defeated our English army.

  Elizabeth goes further. She proposes that she and Mary shall somehow live together, that she and Dudley and Mary shall all live together in some great palace. They shall be two queens sharing a court, sharing an island, and presumably Robert will be shared, too. It is an extraordinary, scandalous, mad idea, and I imagine the Privy Council, William Cecil, and Robert Dudley himself tearing their hair out of their heads.

  Apparently, Elizabeth writes letters to Mary (the city is full of gossip): flirtatious letters, like those written from a lover to his mistress. She is going to send her a diamond ring, like a betrothal ring. She promises eternal love and friendship. She says that if Mary is ever in need or in danger, she shall summon her potent fellow queen and Elizabeth will come to her—without fail. Elizabeth is doing what she does best—encouraging lust for her political ends.

  And then—just like her father, who favored one man over another, so that they would hate each other—Elizabeth now turns to Margaret Douglas, our disgraced cousin, and shows the world that she prefers her to me as an English-born heir. Lady Margaret never had to face her accusers like I did. The testimonies of those who said that she employed soothsayers and necromancers to foretell Elizabeth’s death have all been dismissed. She was released from prison without a stain on her character and now up she pops at court, received with favor, her son the pretty boy Henry Stuart, back from France, towed everywhere in her broad-beamed wake, like a dainty sailing ship after a barge. Margaret Douglas suggests to everyone that Henry Stuart would be a suitable husband for the Queen of Scots—the very idea that gave royal offense earlier!—but now it can be spoken, now it can be considered. Robert Dudley, for one, will favor such a misalliance, if only to spare himself.

  It is madness to ask what a madwoman thinks. It is folly to interrogate a fool. But really—what is the queen thinking, that she would forgive a traitor, jeopardize her own throne, lose her lover, and name her enemy as an heir—just to prevent me coming to the throne after her death? I have always found her inexplicably vindictive; now I find her completely insane. Why would she risk everything to stop me being honored? Why is it so important to her to humiliate and punish me?

  I can only think that she has fallen into the jealous mood of her childhood, when she lived in a constant state of anxiety as to who was favored by her father. First she queened it over her half sister, Mary Tudor, who was forced to wait on her when she was a little child, and then Elizabeth was mortified when the tables were turned and Mary was favored. She saw her despised half sister take the throne, acclaimed by everyone in the first months of her reign. Elizabeth has always been rivalrous of other women: I imagine she hated her stepmothers, then her half sister, then poor Amy Dudley, and now me. She must hate me with a really terrible vengeance if she will sacrifice Robert Dudley in marriage to another woman to keep me from a title. I begin to think that she is as mad as her father.

  But this only makes me fear her more, and I wish I could talk to Ned about my rising concerns. This is no longer a matter of politics, of strategy. This is not a queen avoiding an heir that she fears would draw the attention of the court away from the throne; this is a woman going to the ends of the earth to spite a rival. She is ready to lose the love of her life and nominate the enemy of her country as her heir, in order to keep me from a chance at the throne, and to prevent me living happily with Ned and our children
. How she must hate me to go to these lengths! How she must hate the idea of a happy marriage with beloved children, if she would ruin herself to spoil my life. And how far might she go, to take vengeance on me for being younger, prettier, happier, and a better heir than she was?

  I don’t forget seeing her malice to her half sister, Mary. She watched her die, and tormented her as she died, flirting with her husband and refusing her any comfort. I don’t forget that Amy Dudley died alone at home and that her murderer was never named, but that Elizabeth knew of her death before it was announced. Elizabeth’s rivalry is something a woman should fear. I think of my cousin Mary Queen of Scots and pray that she never falls into Elizabeth’s power as I have done. I think of Margaret Douglas and think it is a miracle that she has been freed. I begin to wonder if Elizabeth is as fatal to her kin as her deadly father was to his.

  THE TOWER, LONDON,

  MIDSUMMER 1563

  The weather becomes terribly hot and the sun beats on the stone walls of the Tower till they are too bright to see and hot to the touch. The moat is a sluggish stinking ditch filled with dung and offal, and the tides do not cleanse it but stir up the filth, and then retreat, leaving rotting seaweed and dead fish. In the evening I can smell the stink of decay from the river, and the terrible sickly smell of the city.

  The lords are demanding that Ned and the babies and I be released from the Tower and allowed to live in the country. Every summer there is sickness in London, but this year is likely to see plague. The returning troops from France, poor and defeated, are terribly diseased, and there is no provision for them. They lie around the streets to beg, coughing and spitting into the open drains that run sluggishly down the center of every street, blocked with rubbish. It is dry weather, with long airless days, so there is no rain to wash away the pestilential filth, and no breeze to blow the sickly miasma from the streets.